Chi Udayashankar

Chitnahalli Udayashankar, fondly known as Chi Udayashankar or Master Udayashankar (18 February 1934 - 3 July 1993) was a renowned lyricist, composer, dialogue writer, screenwriter and film director of the Kannada film industry. He was born in Holenarsipura in the Kingdom of Mysore, Karnataka, British India. He composed 3000+ songs for Kannada films along with numerous other devotional songs. He also wrote heaps of dialogues and tons of screenplays as well for the Kannada film industry. For three decades alongside Rajkumar, he made around 92 movies.

Chi Udayashankar and his family were all well known within the Kannada film industry. He was the son of lyricist Chi. Sadashivaiah.Chi. Sadashivaiah was quite interested in theater, but it wasn’t earning him his livelihood. So he had to depend on his teaching career as a mathematics and Kannada teacher. Chi Udayashankar co-wrote dialogues, songs and lyrics along with his father, early in his career for many Kannada movies. His brother Chi Datturaj was also a director. Chi Udayashankar married Sharadamma, his wife and together they had three children, one of which was Chi. Guru Dutt Born on 9th July 1925, Guru Dutt was an Indian act >> Read More... . Chi. Guru Dutt grew up to be a reputed actor and director, known to have worked in more than 100 movies. Yet, he was versatile with Tamil as well as Kannada films, in the industry. Chi Udayashankar’s songs comprised of easily understood words that anyone could relate. He got the name ‘Sahitya Ratna’ for his work in writing songs.

He first started off with acting, in the year 1959 with the movie ‘Mahishasura Mardini’. In the year 1963, Chi Udayashankar debuted as a writer by writing dialogues for the picture; ‘Santa Tukaram’ starring Rajkumar. He wrote a voluminous amount of dialogues and lyrics for 85 of Rajkumar’s movies. He worked alongside Rajkumar from 1963 to 1993, during these three decades they made 92 movies. After the death of Chi. Udayashankar, Rajkumar’s cinema output decreased a lot. With the picture ‘Shivarathri Mahatme’ in 1964, he started his work as a lyricist. He started off with screenwriting after writing the screenplay of ‘Mahasati Anasuya’ in 1965. He directed his first movie ‘Manku Dinne in 1968. He received several awards for Best Dialogue Writer and Best Screenplay.